RISE AND FALL OF EL RUKN-JEFF FORT`S EVIL EMPIRE

Robert Blau and John O`BrienCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Soon there will be only stories to tell about Jeff Fort, El Rukns, and the ornate South Side theater that was their headquarters.

The gang that once ruled tough Chicago streets with an iron fist today lies in ruin. Last week, six more gang ''generals'' and the gang`s patron, businessman Noah Robinson, were found guilty in federal court of murder and narcotics conspiracy.

The rise of the organization began a quarter of a century ago with a group of seemingly well-intentioned neighborhood teens, led by a charismatic 20-year-old.

Known originally as the Blackstone Rangers, members with a front of respectability attracted federal job-training funds, political allies and grass-roots support.

But opinion soon became sharply divided over the gang, with liberals embracing its goals of self-help and law enforcement condemning it as criminal.

Always at its center was the Mississippi-born, grammar school dropout Fort, who was viewed by his followers as a messianic figure and by others as a demonic con man.

One of the more revealing stories about the now-imprisoned Fort and his gang, for long considered the most violent on Chicago`s streets, was told by Henry Harris, a former Rukn general who testified for the prosecution as it crafted its case.

Harris, built like a nose tackle and wearing thick reading glasses, described from the witness stand a 1981 meeting between Fort and convicted Milwaukee mob chieftain Frank Balistrieri.

In the back room of a smoky bar, Balistrieri leaned over the table and calmly suggested to Fort that if the Rukn organization was in need of cash, it should consider selling heroin, Harris said.

Harris said that the remark infuriated Fort, who is black, and that Fort shouted this warning to his white counterpart:

''If you ever bring heroin to the South Side of Chicago, around my people, I will come down on you so hard your forefathers in Italy will hear your bones rattling.''

Despite his alleged outburst, events would demonstrate that Fort had taken the don`s advice to heart.

Within three years, according to extensive court testimony, Fort and the Rukns were running one of the largest heroin and cocaine operations in the city.

Fort, who for years gave lip service to the position that heroin was a killer among blacks and that it would not be sold by the Rukns, had ordered the gang to market the drug aggressively. Whether or not heroin was a scourge, Fort decided that the drug was too profitable a business to ignore, testimony showed.

Fort`s rhetoric turned out to be a hollow lie, motivated by financial expedience, for which he was willing to sacrifice dozens of lives, including those of followers, former gang members testified.

In the end, there was no shortage of gang members willing to reveal their relationship with Fort, the crimes he ordered and those they carried out. Gone was the fierce loyalty, trust and commitment the Rukns once showed their leader.

''To 99.9 percent of the members, Fort was like a shining light,'' said Rocky Easton, 36, Fort`s brother-in-law and a former Rukn who pleaded guilty to racketeering charges. ''We thought he was bringing us into another era, something our children could be a part of. But it didn`t turn out that way.

''Selfishness and greed started surfacing,'' Easton added in telephone interview. ''This is what turned the members away from the organization. I really believed in it. I really believed in black pride. Fort, to me and the rest of the members, was everything. He was another Malcolm X. But when a person has that much power, it goes to their head.''

In the most recent round of federal trials of Rukn leadership, nine former Rukns have been convicted of conspiracies to murder and deal drugs. Thirty-three former gang members stand convicted of those crimes by juries or have pleaded guilty. Another 18 are awaiting trial.

The city has razed the gang`s most visible symbol: its mosque-like headquarters or ''Fort,'' a onetime theater on South Drexel Boulevard. And apartment buildings once owned by the gang as rent moneymakers and quarters for members have been abandoned.

For now, police say, there are about 20 hard-core members of the gang still loyal to Fort. At one time, membership in the gang was estimated to be more than 1,000, according to informants` testimony.

Authorities said a vestige of the Rukn organization can be found in what police said they suspect is drug-related activity of the children of imprisoned gang leaders. In particular, police have seen offspring of Rukn leaders selling crack cocaine in the Chicago area, according to a Chicago police gang crimes officer.

The portrait of Fort that emerged from the testimony of former gang members and from hundreds of hours of conversations secretly tape-recorded by the government is that of a semiliterate but extremely shrewd leader obsessed with total influence over his cartel and driven by uncanny stinginess.

The 44-year-old Fort is serving an 80-year federal prison sentence in Marion, Ill., imposed in 1987 for conspiracy to commit terrorism on behalf of the Libyan government. Efforts by the Tribune to contact Fort through two of his former attorneys were unsuccessful.

Fort is ''very, very bright but truly frightening,'' said William R. Hogan Jr., chief federal prosecutor in the Rukn trials. He said Fort belongs in the same category as murderous cult leaders Jim Jones and Charles Manson.

Among the actions undertaken by the Rukns, with Fort`s approval or encouragement, were hundreds of murders, a vast drug network that spanned several Midwestern states, and a bizarre, almost comic affair in which gang members traveled to North Africa and conspired with Libyan terrorists, prosecutors charged.

Court documents and interviews with investigators reveal the following about Fort:

Born in 1947 in a small Mississippi town, Fort stopped his formal education in the 4th grade. He dropped out. As a teenager living in Woodlawn, Fort was classified as ''retarded,'' with an IQ of 60, in a Cook County court service evaluation. The finding was grossly inaccurate. Fort couldn`t read or write at the time.

Fort and another Woodlawn friend, Eugene ''Bull'' Hairston, established the Blackstone Rangers in the late 1960s. That gang achieved notoriety by extorting money from pimps and drug dealers, as well as legitimate

businesspeople.

In Woodlawn, Fort became known as a leader who impressed and drew other youths to himself.

''Living in the ghetto, you don`t have too many role models,'' said Easton, who first joined the Rangers in the late `60s. ''Jeff was the type of person you grew up hearing about. It was an honor to walk with him down the street.''

Fort`s philosophy took on its religious bent in 1976, upon his release from prison for defrauding a federal antipoverty grant. He founded the Moorish Science Temple of America, El Rukn Tribe, hoping such an affiliation would cloak the Rukns in freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution and deter law enforcement.

''I wanted to learn about Islam,'' said Herbert Dinkins, 33, a former Rukn ''ambassador'' who was convicted of racketeering charges. ''I thought by joining I could help poor people in the community.

''We had Islamic teachers. We went to Islamic conventions. . . . But Fort used Islam in the wrong manner.''

Fort also developed a keen memory for detail. Although the gang dealt in multi-kilogram quantities of heroin and cocaine, Fort was heard on government tapes harping about the collection of drug debts of as little as $20.

On some days, Fort would call the Rukn headquarters at hourly intervals to hash out such matters, trial tapes showed.

Imprisoned on drug charges in 1983, Fort, then 36, began using coded telephone conversations to control the Rukns, according to a government court filing. Fort believed the code was unbreakable.

Prosecutors and police say their first major break in the case came in May 1985, when Anthony Sumner became the first Rukn general to turn informant for authorities. He did so after police and federal agents from Chicago questioned him in Ohio, where he had fled as a suspect in several Chicago murders.

Based on Sumner`s information, in November 1985, the federal government got permission to tap Fort`s telephone conversations from a federal prison in Texas. Later, two telephones at the fort were tapped. All wiretaps remained in place until August 1986, giving authorities a wealth of inside information.

With the help of informants, the government translated the Rukn code, which turned out to be a mix of street jargon, Swahili and Arabic, according to FBI special agent Ned Hamara, who investigated links between the Rukns and Libya.

The tapes confirmed what many people suspected: The Rukns were involved extensively with heroin and cocaine, reaping huge profits from cheap and numerous street-corner drug sales in Chicago`s Woodlawn and South Shore neighborhoods and on the city`s West Side.

By the spring of 1985, the Rukns had mastered the preparation of heroin for street sale in affordable $10 bags, which became an instant success.

The initial batch of 500 bags sold out in one day, between 9 a.m. and midnight, according to trial testimony.

The source of the narcotics were several dealers introduced to the Rukns by Noah Robinson. The deals brought in at least 3 kilograms of cocaine and heroin a month and began to transform the onetime street gang into an urban crime cartel, prosecutors said.

At about the same time, the gang became the focus of one of the most intensive criminal investigations in the city`s history. As authorities armed themselves with federal laws to combat street crime, the Rukns, given their penchant for sensational violence, became a magnet for ambitious prosecutors and law enforcement authorities.

''I still love Jeff as a brother-in-law,'' said Easton. ''But as a religious leader, as a person who could tell me what to do with my life, he can`t do that anymore. I`ll never follow anyone else again.''